Riot Games are becoming a record label

Exploring this statement.

Making a substack has been in my mind for a while now - it was this link that tipped me over the edge. 

Here’s the article in question:
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/riot-games-and-bmg-strike-strategic-partnership-extend-global-publishing-admin-deal/

So let’s do a bit of backstory on this.

Riot games. We know they look after League Of Legends (LoL) and Valorant. The artists that Riot Games mentioned they worked with in this article are artists that have performed during the League Of Legends World Championship live shows. However, they’ve done some interesting stuff outside of this to prove their diversity. 

Let’s touch on League Of Legends first (Source)

Monthly Users: 126 mi.
Daily Users: 10 million. 
That figures has doubled since 2020 (5mil approx), and shrunk slightly since 2022 (13mil approx).

Firstly, Riot Games have got a netflix show called Arcane. A beautifully animated and well written series. Now, why would a gaming company be wanting to make a visual series? It’s based in League Of Legend’s fictional universe, with incredible detail to relationships between the characters and nuances. Not only can you play the game, but there are now multiple content sources’s to engage with the world and feel a deeper connection with the world. As an ‘Elder’ gamer, there is nothing more I would have loved to do than to deepdive into the lore of the games I played when I was younger - instead I have a load of ROM hacks and speedruns that keep me up at night. 

And a piece on Valorant (source)

Monthly Players: 22mil
Daily players: 500k 

(Don’t be fooled - this is growing rapidly)

Valorant has closely followed this strategy by also having huge annual events, having music releases as well as deeper video content such as their cinematic youtube series and animated DLC trailers. No examples necessary that you can’t YouTube - it’s just at a more developmental stage right now in comparison to LoL. Word on the street is that there is a Valorant Movie being made for 2025.

So we can assume that Riot Games’s strategy is that multiple content sources will keep gamers engaged. Where else have we seen this? Artists. Not only do they have music, but they have live shows, interviews, music videos, behind the scenes, features in films, syncs, AMAs, press, SO many ways for fans to see a deeper world of an artist so that fandom have somewhere to go next. A standard artist campaign is so much more than having them perform, it’s about creating a brand around an artist by worldbuilding. I mean look at Ashnikko’s strong visual aesthetic for enforcing a theme through all of her merch. Or Travis Scott’s Astroworld campaign creating an easy-to-recognise golden head that symbolised Travis Scott’s campaign like a theme park - directly branding and advertising his live tour. 

…Or Lil Nas X’s Twerk Hero video game.

Riot Games’ strategy is set up to perpetually grow. League Of Legends has been a BIG game for a while now, and the Worlds tournament has always been a huge deal. Here’s a video of Imagine Dragons performing at Worlds 2014:

…And then here’s Lil Nas X, Jackson Wang & Edda Hayes from last year (2022):

Since then, fans have stayed due to having so much deeper catalogue to never get bored with, but also new fans have a world and lore to engage with at any given moment. 

Where does music fit into what Riot Games’ plans?

With multiple content sources comes the next step - the music industry. With every video you need good music. It is no doubt that Riot have noticed that their live performances have accrued millions of streams and now, unlike many games, they are almost becoming a broadcaster for their own IP. This is similar to Nintendo, but with key differences - Nintendo decided to set up their own console and in turn restricted access. Riot are prioritizing multiple content streams for their own IP. Let’s not forget that Nintendo made the Super Mario Film that did exceptionally well with rumors of more to come - another successful case study of diversifying content to work your IP.

Let me walk you through a narrative here. Gamer plays LoL and likes LoL. Yeah, okay that’s great. The Gamer in question isn’t too fussed about Imagine Dragons. But then Imagine Dragons suddenly plays the opening ceremony to League Of Legends, and that Imagine Dragons track is suddenly amazing. Hmm. Did the music industry miss some of their audience during their campaign? Or was it the game’s association that drove that connection? 

BMG have clearly recognised the sheer potential of this from their publishing angle. There really isn’t much information on what this could entail, but we can make some educated assumptions. I pinched this from the article:

“That means “signing and servicing songwriters to frontline publishing deals” with BMG as well as exploring “the wide scope of creative opportunities across Riot’s products and music initiatives”.

That has already been happening. Earlier this year the two companies held a ‘BMG SoundLab’ for more than 30 songwriters to write music for upcoming Riot projects.”

This tells us quite a bit. Narrative time again - we think Riot want multiple content streams as a priority. Riot clearly bought an animation studio - that’s done some great things. Could they buy a Label? Yeah, but music has such a crazy volume takeover you would need years to establish something with a huge dedicated team to keep growing it (See Monstercat for the best example and yes this is bias because I absolutely love them). So instead…why not become the label? Let’s get a big songwriting company with a huge eclectic range of current songwriters to make us cool stuff consistently as part of their business model, and we own the masters and can use them in our IP releases whenever. Just like a broadcaster with a blanket license. Nice. 

What does this say to the rest of the gaming industry?

Your IP is important. Make more content, and make it good.

What about the animation/film industry?

Marvel worked (mostly) because of their universe, so why wouldn’t a video game’s universe be great in longform too. And how important are standalone films without derivatives anymore. 

What about the music industry?

Listeners enjoy music according to the context that it is listened to, so your artist’s should lean into any universe’s that they can bridge with their own. This will not be the only gaming company x music company partnership we will see as the monolith publishers partner up. 

TLDR:

Riot Games are a gaming company, a film company, and now a record label. Music has opportunity within these growing narratives, but risk that opportunity being bottle-necked through major partnerships. No one likes a conclusion - all stories must last forever. IP is king.